1974 Lotus Elite S1

"121B"

I purchased 121B in December, 2008 and sold it in August, 2009. This car spent most of its life parked under a carport, infested with rats. I ambitiously set about cleaning and restoring it, but after a few months decided to sell et and focus on my other projects. The current owner has fully restored the motor, and it is back on the road!My first Lotus Elite (107B) gained some notoriety within the Golden Gate Lotus Club. Years after I sold 107B, a fellow club member approached me and said his friend had an Elite he didn't want, and would I be interested? I arranged to go see the car, not really knowing what to expect. What I found was a very original sable brown Elite with 19k miles, sitting in a carport with four flat tires. Registration was from the early 1980s. It was one of those "barn finds" you always hear about. Then I got closer, looked in the windows and opened the hood and realized why this car was free.

Rats.

It turns out the owner bought the car new and enjoyed it until it developed a clutch problem around 1980/81 Since he lived in the foothills, the car was unsafe to drive and he couldn't get the money past his then-wife to repair the car. He parked it in the carport to deal with later. Fast forward 28 years... The dashboard and seat bottoms were dotted with droppings, the floors were covered in feces and acorns, the engine bay was literally packed with nesting material, feces and a half-dozen mummified rat corpses. It was a project alright.

The first order of business was to remove 121B from the carport and get her home to the Crowded Garage. Her tires were permanently flat, so we put the car on blocks and took the wheels to a shop for new tires. We put the fresh tires back on, called a tow truck and started pushing the car out of the carport. One of the rear brakes was locked up and the car wouldn't move. It took another day of wrestling with soap and a floorjack to maneuver the car out for a tow truck to hitch up to.

Once home, I started cleaning the car up. Donning my work clothes, safety goggles and dust mask, I took a shop vac to the interior and got most of the solid waste out, and same with the engine bay. I spent hours pulling chunks of material out of the headlight wells with a coat hanger. After a month however, the police took notice of the expired registration (car was parked on the street) and gave us 24 hours to move it, or get it impounded. We pulled the Esprit out of the garage, again called a tow truck, and had them hitch up and manouver the car into the garage.

After I earned some money working a second job over Winter Break, I found a professional car cleaning company and set them to work. The guys at Reflections Auto Detailing did an amazing job with the car, inside and out, and at an amazing price. They even helped dissassemble the stuck brake and get the car fully mobile. Elite 121B had been reborn!

Unfortunately, after tinkering around some more, I decided to sell the car and focus on more promising (quicker/easier) projects instead. It was sad, but I was proud I was able to save the car and get it to where someone could finish her. And someone did...

A super nice guy named Steve came and bought the car. He pulled the motor, partially rebuilt it, rebuilt the back end and the brakes, and in a few short months, the car was running! I was lucky enough to go for a brief ride in it, and was grinning the whole way. Excellent work Steve!

July 2010 update - Steve sold the car, and 121B is now with a new owner in Southern California!